Student Conferences

I'm meeting with students in my writing class for a couple of days (starting last week).  It's good in many ways.  It gives me a chance to get to know the students a bit better, which is good.  It's also good because in an office hour with one student, you can push the student further.  They don't like it, mostly, but they can't hide, and that's good.

In a way, I wish our students were more like two year olds.  (But only in one way.)  You know how two year olds always ask "why?" about everything, again and again?  I wish our students pushed more like that, had that sense of unsatisfied curiousity.  Or at least a little sense of curiosity.

Mostly, I'm hopeful that they're curious about other things in their lives, just maybe not things in this class.  But then they tell me about those things, and most of them seem to have this very surfacey understanding of even the things they purport to care about. 

I'm reminded of that line from Deteriorata: 

Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most souls


Would scarcely get your feet wet.

Welcome to Monday.